FT begins putting blogs behind paywall

Felix Salmon of Reuters reports that The Financial Times has begun puttings some of its blogs behind a paywall.

Salmon writes, “The post has received three comments so far, all of which are from subscribers to the print newspaper who say that they will henceforth no longer read the blog.

“The move makes sense in a kind of tyranny-of-consistency way: the FT.com site believes that paywalls are the way to go, Money Supply is on the FT.com site, therefore Money Supply must be behind the paywall. But beyond that, it’s silly.

“For one thing, the best reason for newspapers to put a paywall around their website is to support the circulation of the print product, where readers are much more lucrative in terms of both subscription and advertising revenue. Newspapers with free websites fear that their print readers will desert the newspaper for the online product, and they put up paywalls to make that decision less attractive.”